A few concerns about Toutatis

Summary:

Isn't Toutatis making a close approach in 2012?

A few concerns about Toutatis

Molly Broad (guest) 20 Jun 2011 23:45

Hi everyone, my name's Molly, I'm 21, fairly logical, not very superstitious, and I'm from the UK.

So, this is intended to be a rational thread. I'm trying very hard to quell my fear of NEO's (Near Earth Objects) and NEA's (Near Earth Asteroids). All the 2012 New Age mumbo-jumbo doesn't frighten me…what freaks me out is this bad-ass space rock TOUTATIS, apparently set to make a "close approach" in December, 2012.

Thanks to all the 2012 propaganda I am now a regular visitor to NASA's NEO pages, and from what I've read on Wikipedia and NASA's website, the general info on Toutatis is as such: that Toutatis has a 4-year orbit, it "behaves chaotically", and it's next close approach is going to be late next year.

NASA measure how "close" an asteroid is to Earth by lunar-distance, i.e the distance between the Earth and the moon. In 2004 Toutatis made a so-called "close approach" at 14 times that distance. Now I'm no expert, but how can that be considered close?

So that gives me-an amateur-the impression that Toutatis doesn't come so close to us after all. But that was 2004. What if it's gotten closer by 2012? NASA haven't divulged any animated diagrams of Toutatis's current path…which puzzles me, as they provide animated diagrams of the orbits of tens of other NEOs on their website, no problem.

So whats going on? NASA have also said that Toutatis poses NO THREAT to us. Are they lying? And if so, why would they lie?
To be honest Toutatis is scaring the Hell out of me. As I said I'm not a superstitious person. But this isn't mumbo-jumbo. Toutatis is real, and on the bad list, and I am increasingly paranoid that it's the going to wind up being the bane of all humanity.

Can someone please explain, contribute or sympathize?

Re: A few concerns about Toutatis

Tomy2011 21 Jun 2011 00:07

The next close approach will be on December 12, 2012 at a distance of 0.046 AU or 4,275,967 miles (~17 Lunar distances). It's far enough to not cause any disaster on Earth.

So whats going on? NASA have also said that Toutatis poses NO THREAT to us. Are they lying? And if so, why would they lie? To be honest Toutatis is scaring the Hell out of me. As I said I'm not a superstitious person. But this isn't mumbo-jumbo. Toutatis is real, and on the bad list, and I am increasingly paranoid that it's the going to wind up being the bane of all humanity.

What can I say? Toutatis poses no threat to us.

Last edited on 21 Jun 2011 00:11 by Tomy2011 Show more

Re: A few concerns about Toutatis

3WMElliott 21 Jun 2011 00:17

'Close' as a description might as well be useless when it comes to space. I consider Mars close, seeing Jupiter in the skies makes that feel close too, but both are millions and millions and millions of miles away, and yet insanely closer than the nearest star other than our Sun. It's as though it's used to give people who don't know what an astronomical unit is a sense of scale, and yet doesn't help much. It's bizarre.

Anyway, in terms of Toutatis this time around, if you want to bold a number for impact, it's 2012 approach looks like bringing it 17 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. It's far closer than everyone's favourite/most hated Comet known as Elenin will ever get, but still more than 4 million miles away from you. Is it considered close? Yeah, why not. 4 million miles might as well be our cosmic back yard before we annoy the Martian neighbours side of the fence.

Is it threateningly close? Nope. If the figure gets refined as time goes on, it might get closer. It'd be a pretty big event for it to get 17 times closer than predicted, but even then it'd still be as far away as the Moon. Is that still close? (You can see how useless 'close' is by now eh?)

Is it a threat at any point? Potentially, if you want to wait around for a what might be a bit of a cosmic while. Predictions into the far future won't be too accurate right now, but the outcome is likely to be one of two things. An impact or an asteroid that gets flung out of the solar system. And the chances of the former are pretty darn small, practically non-existent for our lifetimes.

You can incidentally find the orbit diagrams on the NEO site, though a few of us do hate that particular tool for it's lack of detail, suffice it to say all the boring numbers can be found in the various tables below it. Animations are few and far between for asteroids in general, I can only recall them for stuff that goes in between the Earth and Moon - and those ones are 'close'…

Molly Olivia Broad (guest) 14 Jul 2011 10:01

Thank you for all your reassurance guys! :) I feel better now. In fact, this whole website makes me feel better.

But wait? You're telling me NASA's trajectory animations are 100% unreliable? Oh God. Who knows what might actually happen then. If they're so useless why make them at all? Surely they've got to have some degree of accuracy, it being NASA and all.

3WMElliott 14 Jul 2011 12:54

No, like I said the boring tables full of details down to umpteen decimal places are there, that's the important stuff, but trying to condense it into a free Java applet so that people who don't understand all the numbers can at least visualize it means they've got to lose something, and that something is usually a bit of detail - you even end up with orbits that are made up of straight lines, simply because the app cant quite get the curve right.

It also goes back to that whole argument over what 'close' is - with limited detail, you simply can't see a gap of a few million miles, you see a gap of a pixel or two, there's no real sense of scale, which of course leads people into thinking of impacts rather than gaps of whatever distances.

So a helpful app to picture it, not so helpful to base your calculations on (which soooo many YouTubers do, for example), for which you need to dive into the tables of cold hard boring to look at data.

obaeyens 14 Jul 2011 18:01

But wait? You're telling me NASA's trajectory animations are 100% unreliable?

The java applet that shows the orbit is some cheaply created thing. NASA should replace that thing.

Re: A few concerns about Toutatis

JamesJJlm 14 Jul 2011 13:48

When thinking of space, I like to remember that if the Earth were the size of a basketball — the sun would be the size of a house about 26 meters in diameter and would be 1.75 miles away! The moon would be a tennis ball at around 24 feet away from the "Earth" basketball.

Our nearest star would be 480,000 miles away!

So when thinking of space, make sure you remember how absolutely huge it is, and that its not 2 dimensional. I comet or astroid could look like its slamming right into us from a 2 dimensional scale, but then go 3d and see that its actually passing 750,000 miles above the Earth. Thats where 2012 youtubers go wrong.

Reference: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/24/how-far-away-is-the-moon/

Last edited on 14 Jul 2011 13:48 by JamesJJlm Show more